Matthew Kellway

[Safe and Accountable Rail Act, March 31st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague is a tremendous advocate in the west end of Toronto for rail safety on behalf of not only his constituents but all Canadians. He raises a critically important point about the frequency of derailments that we are witnessing across this country. I would remind the House that just last month there were three derailments and, thankfully, those derailments took place in relatively remote parts of the country.

However, as we see a million barrels of oil rolling through cities and towns across this country daily, we face the very real and imminent possibility of enormous catastrophes. There are, quite literally, tens of thousands of Canadians who live within a stone's throw of railway tracks in some of the largest cities. It is not, I should say, just about the transportation of oil by rail, it is also about all dangerous goods and the catastrophic effects of those dangerous goods spilling in some very densely populated cities across this country.

[Safe and Accountable Rail Act, March 31st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, most assuredly the NDP is in favour of swift action and response to the frequency of train derailments, the concerns of Canadians for their safety and the safety of others, and the very real potential of looming disasters of derailments in the context of densely populated urban areas across the country.

It is the government that is playing catchup on this issue. The bill comes forward fully two years after the Lac-Mégantic disaster. There is no excuse for the government to have delayed the introduction of a bill like this to deal with the accountability issues for such a long period of time.

I am happy to assure the House and the Canadian public that the NDP will ensure that we move swiftly to get the right bill put through the House and ultimately passed by the House.

[Safe and Accountable Rail Act, March 31st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, increasingly, and I mean daily, the railways across the country are operating as virtual pipelines.

From virtually none in 2008, the number of barrels of oil moving across the country, through towns and cities, has grown exponentially. There were 200,000 barrels of oil shipped per day in 2013. This year an estimated 1 million barrels per day and next year an anticipated 1.4 million barrels will move through towns and cities, through farmland, by lakes and across rivers.

When this began, we had one inspector for every fourteen tanker cars of oil. As of last year, there was one inspector for every four thousand tanker cars of oil.

Since the devastation of the Lac-Mégantic derailment, including the deaths of 47 people, Transport Canada has hired just one additional inspector. That is over a period of two years. This is not what concern for public safety looks like. It is quite the opposite. It is a demonstration of profound disregard for what has transpired, for the risks that confront us daily and increasingly, and for the prospects of a more and ever-greater catastrophe as trains full of oil roll through densely populated urban Canada with increasing frequency.

While the bill, by way of establishing minimum insurance levels and a pooled disaster relief fund, and by increasing the authority of rail safety inspectors, is a small step forward, we support the bill because we believe it is essential to immediately improve the liability and accountability regime of Canada's railways. In the aftermath of Lac-Mégantic, the Government of Quebec, and by extension the public of Quebec, has been left with a liability of close to a half a billion dollars.

The bill does not nearly come close to acknowledging the nature of the problem, the urgency posed by the risks, the enormity of the potential disaster, the concerns of Canadians and, most critically, it fails to acknowledge the government's unequivocal responsibility for ensuring the safety of the Canadian public.

[Petitions, March 31st, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, on this day, the deadline for Canada to submit its climate action plan in advance of the Conference of the Parties in December of this year, I am pleased to present a petition with respect to the climate change accountability act.

The signatories to this petition are concerned about the inaction of the federal government to address climate change and the impacts of climate change on their day-to-day lives.

They call on the federal government to support the NDP's climate change accountability act, a law that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and hold the government accountable.

[Petitions, March 30th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to present a petition in support of affordable child care in Canada. The signatories to this petition note that after nearly a decade of Conservative government, child care costs in this country are soaring and nearly a million kids across this country with working parents have no regulated child care space. They further note that quality child care and early learning offer children a head start in life while easing poverty.

The petitioners call upon the House to work with provinces and territories to implement the NDP's plan for affordable child care across Canada.

[Safe and Accountable Rail Act, March 30th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-52, an act to amend the Canada Transportation Act and the Railway Safety Act.

Railway safety has been a very important issue to the New Democratic Party. We have watched multiple derailments across this country over recent years. This topic has gained a lot of attention and is of tremendous concern to the Canadian public. That concern was most certainly heightened by the terrible tragedy of the derailment in Lac-Mégantic, where 47 lives were lost. It is important to keep at the front of our minds as we discuss railway safety in the House that when accidents like this happen, there are losses that are irrecoverable. Those losses include the loss of life and they include damage to our environment which in many cases we cannot recover.

Since that terrible tragedy in Lac-Mégantic, the Conservatives have promised time and time again to rectify the shortcomings of the railway safety system in Canada with increased safety inspections and rail safety compliance measures. They have yet to honour that commitment and this bill does very little to move us closer to that commitment.

With three train derailments occurring in the span of a month recently, this is a pressing issue, top of mind for many Canadians, not just for those who live where the derailments occurred, but right across this country, for those who live or have loved ones who live close to railway lines. This is an issue which the government has been scrambling to catch up with for the duration of its time in government, which is coming on 10 years now.

So far, these derailments have occurred mainly in rural areas, the terrible tragedy in Lac-Mégantic notwithstanding. As the critic for urban affairs, I am hoping to draw the attention of the House to the potential economic, human, and environmental costs that would arise if something like this were to happen to a train passing through one of our big cities. It should be noted that this bill would do little to alleviate the costs associated with a derailment in urban areas, where in many cases there are tens of thousands of people living quite literally within a stone's throw of a potential derailment site.

There are some principles that we in the NDP adhere to, stand by, and put forward that inform our comments on Bill C-52 through this debate. These core principles include implementing the principle of polluter pay while also improving rail liability and accountability measures for rail companies. The latter, rail liability and accountability measures, are long overdue. In the case of Lac-Mégantic, taxpayers are still on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup costs and rebuilding costs, and of course, as I have mentioned, one cannot put a price on the cost of the lives lost there.

The second principle is that the very fundamental, core responsibility of government is to protect the public. The NDP believes we must do everything in our power to ensure that tragedies such as the one that occurred in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, never happen again. Fixing the liability for that is part of a necessary response to that incident, but it does not deal with the issue of prevention, which of course is the most important principle here.

The third is that we not only need stronger laws, but we need stronger enforcement of those laws and regulations. We need penalties on those who break them. It is clear to us and to the experts, such as the Transportation Safety Board, that the government has a very serious problem in terms of oversight, inspections and audits.

These are the three principles that will inform my comments on the bill itself.

Since 1999, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have let companies self-regulate and self-inspect their equipment and railway lines. This approach is clearly not working to protect the safety of Canadians.

Since 2013 and after the Lac-Mégantic tragedy, Transport Canada has only hired one additional railway safety inspector. The number has gone from 116 in 2013 to 117 in 2015. What we need most of all is for the government to provide the necessary resources to Transport Canada so that it has the needed number of inspectors and auditors to fulfill its oversight function. Rather than cutting the rail safety director's budget by almost 20% as the government has done, the government needs to invest in that directorate's budget in order to protect the safety of Canadians.

The bill put forward by the minister is an effort to address some of the liability and accountability issues associated with railway safety, and its tragic and unfortunate history of derailments. It proposes several necessary fixes, but the fixes that it does propose are simply a start. As I have mentioned, it fails to address the most pressing issue, that of preventing these incidents in the first place.

We not only need stronger laws, but we need stronger enforcement of laws and regulations. We need penalties on those who break those laws and regulations. It is clear to us and to the experts that the government has not put in place the necessary penalties, oversight, inspections and audits to amend the record that we have of railway safety disasters in this country.

Bill C-52 sets out to do three main things. It requires minimum insurance levels for railways transporting dangerous goods. It establishes a disaster relief fund paid for by crude oil shippers to compensate victims of derailments, provinces and municipalities. It provides more authority to the minister, cabinet and railway safety inspectors.

It appears to me that these are measures put forward by a government playing catch-up on this issue of rail safety and have more to do with covering the costs of train derailments than with public safety itself. The bill sets out to provide compensation for victims of derailments after the fact, as if accidents and train derailments are inevitable.

These concerns of ours which we put forward today in this debate in the House are also shared by Safe Rail Communities, a community-based initiative started by people in Toronto. They have raised concerns about the liability amount, and that most of the amendments in this bill are retrospective and retroactive. They are after-the-fact measures. The Safe Rail Communities organization wants to see more preventative action by the government.

Nevertheless, the proposed changes remain necessary, and they do receive the support of this caucus.

When it comes to insurance, there is currently no minimum insurance level for federally regulated railways. However, the Canadian Transportation Agency is mandated to review the insurance coverage of railway companies on a case-by-case basis to make sure that it is adequate.

Bill C-52 would provide for a legislated minimum insurance coverage from $25 million for railway companies transporting minimal quantities of dangerous goods, up to a maximum of $1 billion for railways transporting more substantial quantities. Railway companies would be liable for losses, damages, costs and expenses resulting from a railway accident involving crude oil or other designated goods up to the level of the company's minimum liability insurance coverage. Based on the cost of train derailments, these measures appear to be justified, at a minimum.

After the Lac-Mégantic disaster, for example, the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway exhausted its insurance coverage of $25 million and went bankrupt, yet damages paid by taxpayers have amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars. The Quebec government has estimated that the total cost of that accident will be over $400 million.

The second thing the bill sets out to do is to establish a pooled disaster relief fund that would be made available if the minimum insurance levels are insufficient. Railway companies shipping crude oil would pay a fee, starting at the rate of $1.65 per tonne shipped as of March 31, 2016. That amounts to 23¢ per barrel of oil. The fund would be capped at a total of $250 million to cover costs above the company's insurance coverage if it is involved in an accident.

For the 200,000 barrels of oil transported daily, Transport Canada estimates oil levies under the fund would contribute about $17 million annually to general revenues. While this is a step forward, there are outstanding concerns that this may not be sufficient in the event of another major disaster, particularly in an urban area. This levy would need to be in place for almost 15 years before that $250 million cap was actually generated. With the Lac-Mégantic disaster totalling about $400 million, it is very easy to see that a derailment in an urban area could almost inevitably exceed that $250 million generated through the disaster relief fund.

With respect to more authority given to the minister, cabinet and railway safety inspectors, we say that finally the bill would implement a number of changes to do this. For example, under the bill, railway safety inspectors would be authorized to order a person or company to take any measure they deemed necessary to mitigate a threat to the safety or security of railway operations. These amendments would also authorize the minister to order a company that is implementing its safety management system in a manner that risks compromising railway safety to take necessary corrective measures. These are clearly important measures to put in place.

While the government has a responsibility to ensure that tragedies like Lac-Mégantic never happen again, we also want to ensure that railways have enough insurance to cover all the costs in the event of a disaster, and as mentioned, particularly in the context of a disaster in an urban area. With that said, the amounts are clearly insufficient. The government should do more, and we believe the government can do more.

The government has a responsibility to ensure that no disasters like this take place again, that all of the costs are covered, and to put in place a polluter pay system to be applied to total environmental and cleanup costs of railway accidents. These must and should be borne by the industry, as is consistent with the polluter pay principle, and not downloaded on to taxpayers as they have been in the Quebec context. Once companies are fully liable for their actions, the safety of the public, and the safe transportation of their goods, we believe they will begin to take safety more seriously.

However, we are concerned that the insurance levels established in this bill are not sufficient. Insurance levels should be based on the threat to the public, not just on the type and volume of goods that are transported. Although the bill would establish a pooled disaster relief fund that would be made available if minimum insurance levels are insufficient, we also want to ensure that the fund is sufficient to cover all costs of disasters, including the unlimited liability for railway negligence.

To adequately protect the public from future risk, we want the government to pass the bill before the next election. We are concerned that the government will not make this a priority. It has been playing catch-up, and a bill like this is long overdue in light of the very sorry safety record that the government has with respect to rail safety in this country. That means that we continue to experience uncertainty and a lack of accountability, and communities along railway lines in this country continue to be exposed to terrible and potentially tragic risks.

If the Conservatives are serious about this bill and about these measures, they will take quick action. We in the New Democratic Party are prepared to work with the government—

[Citizen Consultation Preceding Natural Resource Development, March 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to have the opportunity to speak in support of Motion No. 533. As the urban affairs critic for the NDP caucus, I take a special interest in the motion, and I especially applaud the member for putting forward a motion for the inclusion of urban areas that are affected by the establishment of a natural resource development.

Too often, we are presented with false dichotomies by the government and the false choices that flow from them. That people see remote rural life as distinct and separate and unconnected to urban life has a partial explanation in the phenomenology of those lives. They are very different. They are very different experiences. People see very different things on a day-to-day basis.

People say I am talking about an urban agenda for Canada, but what about rural and remote Canada? This is not to deny that there are issues distinct to rural Canada and distinct to remote Canada, nor is to deny that there are distinctly urban issues and considerations. In fact, our party has urged consideration of the peculiarly urban issues in the cities of Canada by the government, and as the critic for urban affairs, I developed and released an urban agenda for Canada for all Canadians to read and consider.

However, the urban agenda and our views on cities and urban life in this country are very much mindful of, and informed by, the fact that urban Canada, our cities, sit in a broader context. They are part of a broader ecosystem. Our water comes usually from somewhere other than our cities. The preponderance of our food usually comes from somewhere other than our cities. It is captured in that common phrase that we see on the bumper stickers: farmers feed cities.

Therefore, cities are shaped by the broader landscape in which they are embedded, and the converse is true as well. Cities shape the broader landscape in which they are situated, and this is true of all cities. It was true in a city in Saskatchewan that I visited. It was in the context of a booming extractive economy there that the chamber of commerce told me it is not just about environmental assessments but that they also need to have community impact assessments for resource development happening outside the boundaries of the city. The suggestion was that before the next big project goes in, there needs to be an assessment of whether that city can handle the traffic that flows from that project, handle the housing required by the influx of workers for that project, and so on.

In another city in Saskatchewan, a large community service agency told me that it was only when the rural and remote extractive economy started to boom that the extent of the true challenges of homelessness in that city actually emerged. As with any ecosystem, the system flows one way or another.

I would like to tell a story about a natural resource development project close to Toronto. It was the Melancthon Township megaquarry.

Melancthon Township sits about 80 kilometres north of Toronto. It is class 1 farmland and provides about half the potatoes eaten by the citizens of Toronto annually. The land is called the headwaters because it sits atop a number of watersheds that provide fresh water to about one million people in cities in Ontario.

Thousands of acres of the headwaters and of class 1 farmland were purchased a few years back by what was then considered to be the tenth-largest financial hedge fund in the world. The plan was to build a megaquarry where that farmland existed. It was to cover 2,300 acres and go down 200 feet for the purpose of getting aggregate rock to ship into our cities to continue to build out the sprawl of Toronto and the surrounding municipalities.

Now, 2,300 acres is actually about half the size of my riding of Beaches—East York, so it was obviously worthwhile to share with people a vision of what this thing would like. It would be half my riding, going down about 20 stories. One of the interesting things was that being the headwaters, the water table sat just below the surface, about 20 feet down, requiring the pumping of water in perpetuity for the mining of this aggregate.

Efforts were made repeatedly to engage the environmental assessment process on this, but that process has been so ravaged and degraded that there were really no hooks.

What was understood by thousands upon thousands of residents in Toronto was that this issue was their issue, that the building of a megaquarry on class one farmland, 80 kilometres outside of Toronto, was in fact an urban issue.

At one point, thousands of Torontonians went north one weekend and clambered across fields and through the woods for a local food cook-off put on by professional chefs. On another occasion I organized a bus tour for constituents of mine and other NDP MPs in Toronto to go north to meet the farmers who were holding out on the hedge fund and hanging onto their farmland.

Finally, there was a soup day to support the fight against the megaquarry. It was held in my riding in a park, and 40,000 Torontonians came out to my park to buy soup, but most importantly, to support the concerns of those farmers and other residents living in and around Melancthon Township about the development of this megaquarry.

Similar activities have taken place outside of Toronto and have engaged the citizens of Toronto. Not all of these have been about natural resource development. Some have been quite the opposite. In fact, on the federal lands in Durham region, the government and previous governments, going back to the 1970s, have proposed taking class one farmland and building an airport, just paving it over, for the continuing development of the city.

However, like the megaquarry, the citizens of Toronto understand that issue and that project to be an urban issue. Those farmlands outside the city are important for local food security for our city so that we have, close to urban life, easy access to fresh food.

As with the megaquarry, it was easy to fill a bus of constituents and head out to tour those lands in support of farmers who are living lease by lease on those lands.

It is clear that where there is an ecosystem, where our cities are embedded in a broader landscape, there is also a social ecosystem, and we are connected. The first nations both within our city and outside our city, whose lands these are, the farmers whose lands these are, and urban residents, as well, understand that we are connected this way.

This was and remains my attraction to the opportunity Bill C-40 presented to us. Unfortunately, it was an opportunity spoiled. It was an opportunity for Canada's first national urban park so that we could begin to at least aspire to the notion that urban Canada and the concept of ecological integrity in our cities, being more energy sufficient and more food sufficient and secure in our own cities, is possible. We can begin to build and shape our cities so that urban life can exist in this landscape.

Let me conclude by applauding the motion in its entirety. More specifically, let me applaud the inclusion of urban communities in the motion and by extension the kind of collaborative and inclusive decision-making processes that will rise up from the passage of this motion.

[Petitions, March 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, Bangladesh celebrated the 44th anniversary of its independence. Canada was one of the first countries to recognize the existence and independence of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, and we have enjoyed a great friendship ever since. Over the years, the Canadian Bangladesh diaspora here in Canada has made a tremendous contribution to Canadian society.

The signatories to this petition are calling upon the Government of Canada to designate March 26 each and every year as Canada Bangladesh Day in recognition of the partnership and ongoing friendship between our two countries.

[CBC/Radio-Canada, March 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, Conservative cuts to the CBC continue to damage the cultural fabric of Canada. Yesterday, CBC management announced 244 layoffs. This is on top of the 400 jobs lost in October. This latest round strikes at the heart of local news services.

Canadians believe that our public broadcaster is important. That is why an NDP government would reverse the Conservative cuts and stand up for the CBC. Why will the Conservatives not get on board?

[Neil Young, March 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, on March 7, a lovely man and the former MP for Beaches and Beaches—Woodbine died.

This chamber was Neil Young's place of work from 1980 to 1993, but Neil lived his life at the heart of the Beach and he will carry on in the hearts of many in Beaches—East York. Neil was what we all ought to be as people and as politicians: modest; determined; ambitious for those he represented, not for himself; loving to those who needed care and caring to those he loved; and what I loved most especially about Neil, joyful in the face of adversity.

Robbie Burns wrote Neil's epitaph and I paraphrase only slightly:

An honest man now lies at rest,
As e'er God with his Image blest:
A friend of man, the friend of truth,
The friend of age and guide of youth;
Few hearts like his—with virtue warm'd,
Few heads with knowledge so informed:
If there's another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.

Rest in peace, Neil, and I thank him.